Thursday 4 October 2007

Arms Reach mini co-sleeper


Arms Reach mini co-sleeper, originally uploaded by Lisa Durbin.

Mia was starting to reach the point of outgrowing the moses basket and me, being the demented "But she's my last baby!" lunatic that I am, felt that she I wasn't ready to move into her own room just yet. Remembering that LisaS said we can get co-sleepers in this country, I went on a hunt for said creature. All I could find were essentially full-sized cots/cribs with a drop-down side you can put next to your bed. Considering that we don't have much room in our bedroom (it's all taken up by our mammoth bed), this simply wasn't an option.

One of the Google hits I got for "co-sleeper" was for something called an Arm's Reach co-sleeper listed on eBay. It was exactly what I needed - and typically, very difficult to get in this country (there is one distributer in Ireland, but it costs a stupid amount of money.) As it happens, the seller lives in Kent and we were heading down to Kent the weekend the auction ended. I wrote to her and asked if she could do me a bit of a deal if we a) paid cash for it and b) picked it up ourselves and she agreed.

It's fantastic! Sort of like a travel cot with a basinette option, but much slimmer so it fits very well next to our bed. In fact, it takes up just a little more room (lengthwise only) than the moses basket. The left hand side is flush to the top of our mattress. It's got storage pockets on the ends and the right hand side unzips so you can access the space between the mattress and the bottom of the co-sleeper. I wish I knew about this sort of thing after I had Jack. It would have made it so much easier to pick him up for nighttime feeds after the c-section.

She can stay in this co-sleeper until she's able to get up on her knees, so maybe 7 months? I think that's when Jack started to get up on all fours. Then I guess she'll finally move into the nursery. Maybe. Okay, she will. I think.

(By the way, contrary to what this photo may imply, I don't read Kathy Reichs to my daughter at night.)

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